


When Mindy Met Mark

by Albiona



Category: The Martian (2015), The Martian - All Media Types, The Martian - Andy Weir
Genre: After Ares 3, Could be read as super slow burn, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Light Angst, Mark visits NASA, Mindy's an interplanetary voyeur, No 'When Harry Met Sally' except the title, Or not if you don't like the pairing, Slow Burn, and she hates it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-17
Updated: 2021-03-17
Packaged: 2021-03-26 04:34:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30100371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Albiona/pseuds/Albiona
Summary: After Ares 3 returned to Earth, Mindy Park vowed to never watch Mark Whatney again without his knowledge. She's also been dreading meeting him, and today's the big day.
Relationships: Mindy Park & Mark Watney, Mindy Park/Mark Watney
Comments: 10
Kudos: 18





	1. SatCon

Mindy had anticipated this. Had planned for it. Had avoided the welcoming crowd this morning by using a side gate to NASA’s complex and RSVP’d “No” to the reception this afternoon. She’d dressed in the standard navy NASA polo and straight-leg black pants. Her hair was pulled back, her glasses on. 

She had satellite imagery to analyze for upcoming missions, so even though she’d known SatCon was on the Mark-Whatney-Thanks-NASA tour, she couldn’t justify hiding in the bathroom all day. Besides, knowing Dr. Kapoor, it was going to happen one way or another. She was part of the Ares 3 team, and Mark Whatney was here to meet the team. To shake hands and say thanks and schmooze. Venkut kept insisting on her importance; he’d probably drag Whatney all over the building looking for her if she wasn’t at her station.

She really shouldn’t dread meeting him. 

When the ambient volume in the hall increased tenfold a few heartbeats before the door to SatCon opened, Mindy had to stamp down the urge to flee for the bathroom after all. To not be seen by this man she’d spent over a year watching, analyzing, informing on. And before she could tell herself to get a grip on more than her armrests, he was there. 

Mark Whatney, astronaut.  
Mark Whatney, botanist.  
Mark Whatney, Martian.  
Mark Whatney, hero.  
Mark Whatney, rescued.  
Mark Whatney, still a bit gaunt.  
Mark Whatney, whose teeth had yellowed despite his vitamin regimen.

Not that flossing wasn’t the first hygiene routine to go after Mindy discovered Mark Whatney was still alive on Mars. She could barely remember anything about that time that wasn't related to Whatney.

Teddy and Venkat bracketed Mark on either side as they led him into SatCon. Mitch had positioned himself directly behind, a carefully constructed bubble to keep too many people from overwhelming Mark. He was still recovering, after all. He’d rejoined humanity a handful of humans at a time—his crew mates, the ISS crew—then all at once. Footage of him emerging from the capsule to the organized swarm of the landing crew, showed him stumbling back, recoiling from touch and the chaos of so many bodies moving around him. His helmet had still been on, his face hadn’t been visible, but Mindy could read him. 

She considered the watching Whatney part of her life and job over, so it had startled her to recognize his stress response as he climbed out of that capsule. As did the intense shame that had washed over her. 

Martinez and Vogul had taken Mark between them and walked him over to the decompression chairs for the obligatory “home safe” photo. And as they took it, Mindy swore that she would never again watch Mark Whatney without his knowing. No more photos. No more news footage. No primetime interviews. 

She wouldn’t watch him climb his was back out of the trauma she’d watched him endure, more than any one else in the universe had. Her one-sided watching was sick, and it was done.

The city of Chicago had thrown him an honest-to-God ticker tape parade, with Mark waving from the top of an open air bus, his parents on either side of him. Mindy had clicked away.

The Cubs had sat him directly behind home plate and promised him season tickets for the rest of his life. Mindy had turned the game off.

The noisy hum surrounding Whatney prompted analysts around the room to stand and moved away from their stations. They were drawn by the gravity of Mark’s smiling, easy charm and the knot of important-looking suits trailing along behind them.

She supposed, more generously, this tour was a way for all of NASA to close the book on this traumatic episode of their lives. Here’s the astronaut you all worked so hard to save. You’ve seen him in person, now you can relax. You can stop dreaming of Rover and MAV explosions. Or maybe that was just her.

There was spontaneous applause, a gregarious wave of the hand and a few words of thanks that Whatney had no doubt shared in every room and hallway he’d entered since arriving on campus at 0900. Not that they weren’t heartfelt.

Then Dr. Kapoor and Teddy were leading Mark her way, and Mindy wished she had called in sick.

“This is Mindy Park,” said Venkat when they arrived at her station. 

Mindy had stood at some point. She didn’t know when, but she was glad to find her legs under her. Not standing might make it seem like she wasn’t glad he had returned to earth safely. Which wasn’t true, obviously. 

Kapoor continued, “She’s the person who first realized you were still alive.”

Mark blinked, took a quick breath that felt out of place, and grinned. “So you’re the nerd who saved my life.”

Everyone laughed except her and Dr. Kapoor. 

Whatney was nervous, straining a little to keep it all reined in. 

Shame prickled along her hairline. He was a stranger. She shouldn’t know this, shouldn’t be able to tell.

“I was just in the right seat, on the right shift,” she said.

He was a stranger with a too-handsome face. 

She didn’t trust people who were too good-looking. Or charming. Charm is a weapon. It’s only ever used by people who want something. 

But she couldn’t hold on to her annoyance, because Mark probably just wanted to get through this so he could go home and not come out again for a year. 

She wanted that for him. She wouldn’t mind a few months of hibernation herself.

Venkat leaned closer to Mark, who was shifting side to side now that they weren’t walking. Venkat continued, “Mindy was more than in the right seat. She took initiative to look at the imagery I'd ordered and called me in here in the middle of the night. She analyzed your satellite imagery from Sol 49 until you took off in the MAV. She managed the satellite orbital rotations and kept Martian time for over a year so she would be watching whenever you were awake. Mindy even learned morse code so she could translate your messages faster.”

Mitch spoke up, “We all got a lot of 2 and 3 AM emails from Mindy while you were on Mars.”

Mark reached out his hand and Mindy took it automatically, though her gaze slid to one side. No more watching. 

“It sounds like I was right,” he said. “Life saver.”

“It got creepy,” Mindy objected, her voice flat. “Intrusive. Especially because it was just me watching you, not a team.” And immediately she flushed that she’d said this not to Dr. Kapoor for the thousandth time, or in front of Teddy who heads all of NASA, but to Mark himself. She pulled her hand back. “How was the deep dish?”

A few people whooped. About half the group clapped, but it didn’t take off.

Mark, however, had stilled. His forehead creased, and he no longer seemed aware of the dozens of people around them. His focus had narrowed to just her. 

“I probably scared the shit out of you a couple of times,” he said. His tone was somber, and the direct way he was looking at her, and the fact that he said “you,” not “everyone” or “NASA,” made Mindy feel like she was the one with 11 satellites aimed at her. 

“Well, sure,” she said, shrugging to hide a flinch. “The Hab breach. The time you threw your back out. Going after Pathfinder.”

Mark answered in a similar deadpan: “The time I fried Pathfinder. The sand storm. Rolling the rover.”

She and a few other people chuckled, smiled. “Yeah.”

Mark inclined his head a few degrees, his eyes darkening slightly. “Sorry, Mindy.”

She shrugged. “I mostly blame Mars.”

“Yes,” agreed Mark, nodding earnestly, his voice growing louder as he leaned away from her again. “Mars is an asshole.” 

Some tension Mindy hadn’t been conscious of broke. 

Addressing the rest of the room, Mark called out with a grin, “Mars is an asshole.” Which got the entire retinue of suits and hand-jittery SatCon analysts laughing again.

Mark reached out again, Mindy took his hand again, but he wasn’t shaking it this time. He touched his second hand to hers and squeezed. “Thanks, Mindy Park.”

Mindy took in a thin breath. Trying for lightness, she said, “We nerds are glad you made it home safe, Mark Whatney.”

Mark winked. “I have a big soft spot for nerds, you know. Next time you’re in Chicago, the deep dish is on me.”

And that brought sweat to her forehead, which just made no sense. It wasn’t like Mark Whatney was flirting with her. 

Teddy and the rest of the Whatney bubble led him out of the room then, the retinue following. 

Her fellow analysts took forever to drift back to their work stations and offices, preferring to chat in knots and glance at Mindy, who was not chatting. Mindy was analyzing.

Mark Whatney was a _winker_. Ew. 

And she wasn’t only sweating on her brow—she was warm all over. Double ew.

It wasn’t like they’d actually have deep dish together. She never went to Chicago, even if she had kind of gotten into the Cubs these last few seasons. No matter what time she was home, there always seemed to be a Cubs game on, or a replay of a game, and she could let it play in the background as she made herself some toast or a sandwich, sit on the sofa, avoid vacuuming, and fall asleep. 

As Mindy sat back down, pulled her chair back up to her screen, she itched for the fountain pen she’d bought the day the Ares 3 crew had landed in Kazakstan. She wanted to write until her mind made sense to her.

She’d been dreading meeting Mark Whatney, and now it was over. So why was she disappointed? And why did she still feel as though a bunch of satellites were aimed straight at her?


	2. Imagery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The 2nd time Mindy meets Mark

As Mindy crafted her email about possible landing sites for Ares 6, she sensed someone step to her right. Jules must have come in early for her shift. 

“Uh, Mindy?”

She startled so hard she kicked the desk, and found Mark Whatney, grey suit coat missing and sleeves rolled up past his elbows, standing between her and the empty station. 

“Oh,” she said. “Whatney.”

“Sorry,” he said, cringing slightly. “Are you busy?”

Glancing around at her coworkers—a couple had noticed and were openly staring—she pushed back from her computer and angled toward him. “I guess not. Is the tour over?” 

Whatney turned the empty chair so he could sit down. “Yeah, I finished it and the press conference a little while ago. I snuck out of the reception when everyone thought I was in the bathroom.” 

Mindy let her feet sway her side-to-side in her chair. “I can’t imagine it’ll take long for them to catch on.”

She expected a joke, something about the long-term effects of an all-potato diet maybe, but Whatney just said, “Yeah.” Glancing around, he hunched forward in Jules’s chair. “I was wondering. Could I see some of the satellite images from when I was on Mars? The ones you were using to keep an eye on me?”

Mindy blinked. “Really? They’re all publicly available.”

“I know, and I tried, but it was hard to make sense of what I was looking at,” he said. “I want to see them,” he gestured uselessly at Jules’s screen, “how you saw them, I guess.”

His voice was low and graveled, probably from the number of people he’d had to talk to that day. He could probably use some water.

Mindy picked up her coffee mug. Very empty. 

“Sure,” she said. “Give me a minute to grab a drink. Why don’t you meet me in the conference room,” she gestured to the closed glass door in the back of the room. “The screens in there are bigger.”

When Mindy returned from the break room with 2 bottles of water, Mark had woken the conference room computer, dimmed the lights, and pulled two rolling chairs with mesh backs to the front of the room.

After navigating to the correct server location and grabbing the tablet to control the screens, Mindy pulled up that very first image from Sol 49. Enlarging it, feeling a prickle of awkwardness, she explained the features, the evidence that he was alive and doing EVAs. When Mark didn’t answer, she pulled up the first image of him doing an EVA on the adjacent screen, pointing to his tiny figure, official confirmation of his continued life.

After a minute of looking, Mark said, “That’s not a lot to go on. The rover’s small, but I’m tiny.”

He sounded disappointed. Like he hadn’t wanted to see himself looking so insignificant amidst all that red.

Mindy pushed at her glasses once. “By this point, we had the orbital rotations worked out so you were constantly visible except for a 4 minute window every couple of days. It would be hard to spot you out of nothing, but I was used to the features around you by this point.”

“When was this?” he asked.

“Sol 69, when you were prepping for your trip to get Pathfinder.”

“When did you figure out where I was headed?”

“Dr. Kapoor figured it out a few days in. When news got around that you were on a trip, everyone assumed you were headed to Ares 4. Some psychologists were wondering if you were on some sort of suicide mission. Get to a radio so you could talk to someone again before you died.”

Mark’s eyes shot to hers. “Is that what you thought?”

Mindy shook her head, caught in an urgency she didn’t quite understand. “I watched you load up supplies and do systematic driving experiments for weeks before that trip. But you didn’t take the water reclaimer—” she pointed to it on the first screen, “so I knew you had a shorter trip in mind.”

Mark looked to the floor, then his hands. His shoulders slanted toward the floor.

“Can I see something from that trip? Around when Venkat figured it out?”

She picked the exact image they're been looking at when Venkat had had his idea.

Mark picked out the rover quickly, his small dust trail indicating his direction, and he stood from the chair to walk to the bright LED screen.

Pointing to the line of hills on either side on his rover, he said, “I recognize this. This is Lewis Valley.”

“Lewis Valley?” Mindy asked. “I didn’t realize it was big enough for anyone to name.”

“It isn’t,” said Mark, “but I was there. I named it.” He waved his hands over the feature on the screen. “It was beautiful. The valley itself was formed by a flash flood, and the hills here were all stratified rock. Commander Lewis would have loved it.”

“Have you told her?” Mindy asked. After a moment, she added, “Or, anyone? I would have expected that to be in one of Dr. Kapoor’s update emails or on CNN or something.”

“I probably should,” he said. “I hadn’t thought about it until I saw it again. Could you email both of these to me?”

After she did so, Mark asked, “Can you show me when the Hab popped?” 

And so it went for almost two hours. Her coworkers filed past, unable to hear though they could all see her and Mark Whatney reliving his time on Mars through satellite imagery. Venkat even came by. Mark either didn't look or ignored him, and Venkat just waved to Mindy through the glass and left again.

No one interrupted. No one hung out by the windows to stare. 

Mark pointed out Whatney Triangle, described looking out over a crater and realizing he couldn’t see the other side. What Poirot novels he was reading at points on his trips. When he made peace with certain disco tunes. And Mindy explained her side of it. Walking into a meeting with Teddy and Mitch for the first time. The guess work. The constant demands for updates. The feeling of seeing something catastrophic unfolding for him, and ultimately knowing that no amount of analysis on her part could help him. 

“I was totally alone,” Mark said of that final image of the MAV’s initial burn, right before takeoff. “But I knew NASA was watching. I figured it was a big team of people. I didn’t know it was one person, constantly watching to see if I was okay.”

Mindy shrugged, feeling a prickle of unease on her arms. “That’s me. Interplanetary voyeur.” More quietly she added, “I’m sorry. I complained, but….”

“It had to be done,” Mark answered. His eyes flicked to hers. “That’s part of being an astronaut. You give up a lot of privacy about your body to a lot of really smart people."

Mindy narrowed her eyes at him. “Diapers and kidney monitors?” she asked. Even the Apollo astronauts had objected to their bodily functions being monitored so closely.

Mark grimaced, almost theatrically, and Mindy fought not to laugh. 

"I do not miss that," Whatney grumbled. "But it's part of the gig. You don’t need to feel sorry that you ended up being one of those people." He winked and turned the wattage up on his grin, striking Mindy again with how too handsome he was. "Since it had to be someone,” he said, eyes pinning her in place. “I’m glad it was you.” 

And Mindy was sweating again, the subject of satellites.

A beat after, Mark cleared his throat and wiped his hands down his suit pants.

“After all that I put you through, I feel like I owe you a beer. I’m serious about the deep dish, but I don’t think Gino’s will still be open by the time we fly to Chicago. When does your shift end?”

Mindy swiped at the tablet, then stood. “Uh, forty-five minutes ago.” 

“Damn,” said Whatney, pushing his chair toward the table. “I’m sorry.”

“S’okay,” said Mindy, closing out files and restoring the screens and tablet to their resting state. She’d have to finish her analysis in the morning. 

Mark came around to take her water bottle for the recycling, and said, “I guess I better buy you dinner too.” When Mindy looked up at him, his face was a little flushed and he was shifting from foot to foot, self-conscious again. 

“Is that okay?” he asked, already taking a step back from her. “Some real food and a beer? We don’t have to talk about Mars.”

Mindy glanced around too, biting down the echoes of shame to ask herself what she really wanted. They’d been talking for hours, and she’d forgotten he was a stranger. She liked him, somehow. Even if he was too good looking. 

“‘kay,” she said. “Where do would a former Martian want to go?”

“Your favorite place,” he said. “Wherever you go the most.”

Mindy narrowed her eyes at him. “What if that’s McDonald’s?”

“I’m open to any and every Earth food except potatoes.”

Nodding slowly, Mindy answered, “‘kay. Sure.”


	3. Dinner

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mark makes good on his offer of dinner—sort of

Mindy gave Mark the address to her favorite pub. It was in her neighborhood, and familiar, and as Mark stepped out of his rental car he looked around the street like it was Disneyland.

They ordered at the bar—a few patrons and the bartenders all asked for selfies—then they brought their beers to a high top table in the front corner of the room. Mark let Mindy pick a seat first, then moved opposite her. 

“I just bought an apartment near here,” he said, sliding into his chair. “Once I’ve eaten at every restaurant in the city, I’m definitely coming back here.”

Mindy grinned at his enthusiasm. “This place is great. They started delivering last year. I can order as I’m leaving SatCon and meet Charlie in the parking lot of my building.”

“Do you live near here too?”

Mindy nodded. A curly-haired man in the pub’s trademarked t-shirt arrived with a basket of onion rings, another of cheese curds, and a couple of salad plates.

Mindy lined up the baskets with the condiment bottles between them.

“Okay, this is important. All their condiments are made in-house.” She pushed the ketchup to the left. “Ketchup goes with the cheese curds.” She picked up the mustard and the mayo. “Try these with the onion rings. Separately. Not together.” Upending each bottle, she squirted three distinct piles on each of the plates and passed one to Mark. 

Mark popped his first cheese curd into his mouth sans ketchup and groaned. “Fried cheese. God, I missed fried food. The first chance I get, I’m going to one of those big national fairs and I’m eating everything. Elephant ears, funnel cake, candied apples, fried Oreos—" he lifted his brows suggestively, “fried butter.” Mindy tried not to snort out her first sip of beer. 

“And after you throw up?” she asked. 

“Then I’m going to eat it all again,” he said.

Swirling a cheese curd into a heap of ketchup, Mark took a slow, leisurely bite, hunching in his chair. His moan was practically erotic, and Mindy took a long swig to make sure her red cheeks could be attributed to the alcohol.

“I ran out of ketchup on Sol 203,” Mark said, gravel back in his voice. “I’m not ashamed to say I cried.”

Mindy laughed. “I’ll buy you a bottle of this to take home if it’s that good.”

Mark shook his head. “I’ll circle back eventually, but first I want to try every kind of ketchup humans have created. There needs to be a World of Ketchup where I can taste them all in the same afternoon."

“I think you’d be the only one in there, but if the great Mark Whatney wants it, the world might just open one.”

The light dimmed, and his dimples drooped.

“Sorry,” said Mark, wiping his fingers on the napkin by his bottle. “I know I said no Mars talk.” 

Mindy shrugged. “I don’t mind.”

Mark picked up an onion ring. “Still. I promised. I don’t want you to think that’s all I can talk about.”

 _Not that it mattered what she thought, of course,_ Mindy clarified in her head. Mark didn't feel the need, or maybe the heat creeping up his collar meant he just decided not to.

Shrugging, she said, “It’s probably hard not to talk about. It was a big thing. It took years of your life.”

Which it was, in more ways than one. But as the minutes stretched, and Mark continued to look at his hands as he eat cheese curd after cheese curd, she wondered if she’d somehow gotten things a little too right. Too perceptive. Read him too well. Before she could figure out how to put him at ease again, he spoke.

“I’m still processing,” said Mark. “It’s probably weird to other people, sorry.”

Taking a swig, Mindy leaned back in her chair. 

Trying not to think too hard, she said, “Can I ask you something that’s none of my business? About Mars?”

Whatney took a long draw of his beer. “Go ahead, Park.”

She smiled. Like a kid with a crush. _God._

Schooling her expression, she asked, “Do you ever miss it?” 

“No,” said Whatney immediately. Then, more grudgingly, “Mostly no. I loved being an astronaut. I loved all I got to see. I miss being an astronaut; I’ll never get to do that again.” He looked up, “Not that spending three years as one wasn’t more than enough.” Mindy nodded. “I worked toward that goal for most of my life. Even after I got picked for the crew, I assumed that I’d be eligible for other missions after Ares 3. But the moment that antennae hit me, Ares 3 became my last mission. Even if it did also turn out to be the longest.”

Mindy gestured to the last cheese curd, offering it to Whatney. When he shook his head no, she fished it out of the basket, dipped it in ketchup, and popped it into her mouth. When she finished chewing, she said, “It’s gotta be hard to find a new career after being the most famous astronaut-slash-Martian in history.”

Whatney nodded, his smile and shoulders dropping. “I’ve had some offers. Books deals. Professorships. Research fellowships. Congressional lobbyist. Daytime TV host." He winked up at her, "Late night TV host.” 

Mindy tried not to react to any of these, and especially not to the wink. She couldn’t see Mark Whatney doing any of them. But as she reminded herself, she didn’t know him. She knew some pixels on a computer screen. This was a real person, and he was looking at her carefully.

“I think astronaut training makes the most sense,” he said.

Mindy nodded. “So you’ll be in Houston.”

“Yeah. Thus the apartment and everything. My folks are a little sad I won’t be staying with them longer, but a man can only sleep in his childhood bedroom so long before almost dying on Mars is the least of his problems.”

Mindy grinned and watched Mark take a long sip from his beer.

“Obviously, it wasn’t as weird for me as it was for you,” she said, “but it was weird. I stared at those images for so long. Analyzed all kinds of disasters you were undergoing, or might be undergoing." She sat forward, feigning concern: "Is something about those pixels on the water reclaimer off? What if it breached? Did all the water boil off? What's wrong with that 3rd solar cell? That looks different from this morning. Better compare. Oh, wait, it's literally exactly the same." Rolling her eyes at herself, Mindy dredged an onion ring through her pile of mayonnaise. "I checked the weather in Acidalia Planitia obsessively. There was a hurricane headed for Houston, and I didn't know until the day evacuations started but I knew exactly how many dust devils had kicked up with 50 km of the Hab the day before." 

Mark was grinning at her, and it was making Mindy feel hot. She stuffed the onion ring in her mouth. After she finished chewing—which always takes longer when you're waiting for it—Mark was still just looking at her.

Slumping in her seat, she said, "I dreamed about disasters too. I dreamed I got a call that the Hab popped and I was halfway to work at 3am Martian time before I realized it hadn't been real. Once I even dreamed I was on Mars and you were the one analyzing the imagery. But you had still been there before. You were looking at the data and got on AOL to IM me through what I needed to do to survive. The Hab was my grandmother’s living room and her week-old lemon bars on a plate on the coffee table was the only food I’d have for the next year.”

The corner of Mark's eyes softened. “I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. Especially the AOL part.”

Mindy nodded to acknowledge the joke and continued, “I wasn’t worried in the dream. Or scared. I knew you were sitting at my desk, looking at those images, and you knew exactly what I should do.” She selected a small onion ring and was dragging it through her mustard when Mark spoke.

“I still dream that I’m there. Something’s fucked up and I’m trying to fix it. And I know if I fail I’ll die.” 

This wasn't the ticker tape hero. This wasn't the Cubs fan at the home opener. Mindy shifted in her seat, drawing his gaze.

“After working so hard to get yourself off that asshole of a planet, I’m not surprised your brain still works on it. It’s hard to put down problems that big.”

Nodding, Mark dipped his onion ring in his pile of mustard. “I thought it’d get better once I got back on Earth. But when I sleep, my brain isn’t sure I’m really here. So it’s working on all these possible problems, just in case. For the first few minutes after I wake up, I’m still doing the math to try to make sure I have enough calories to survive, or I’m trying to hack the rover or something.”

He dipped a second onion ring and ate them both at the same time.

“Did you ever watch Survivor?” Mindy asked. 

Mark sat straighter at the change in topic and grunted in the negative.

“The contestants all had a kind of PTSD after. Like, all of them. Every season. The show must’ve had some pretty iron-clad wavers. They’d wake up in their hotel room after being voted off, and they’d be crouched on the floor trying to light a fire with their sneakers and stuff. The show had a full team of psychologists and therapists working with them but it still took months, sometimes, for that kind of stuff to stop happening. And they were only on the island or wherever for a couple weeks. You were alone on another planet for over a year. You—” she broke off, hesitated, but Mark’s open expression and frozen posture, his thumb worrying the back of his spoon, made her take a breath and say, “Your brain may never totally put down that puzzle.” 

Mark looked down at the cutlery. “I’m gonna get another beer. You want one?”

Mindy straightened. “Uh, sure. One more.”

He ate an onion ring in one go and left the table.

 _Shit, shit, shit._ Mindy picked up her own spoon and tapped its bowl against her temple.

When Mark returned, Mindy took her beer from his hands and set it gingerly on the table. When her tablemate had settled back into his chair, she said, “I’m sorry, Whatney. I shouldn’t speculate. I don’t know how any of this is effecting you. Or will. Or anything.” She waved her hand in the air. “I don’t know anything.”

Mark leaned back in his chair. “You're right though.”

And a wave of shame returned. Mindy lowered her eyes but Mark must have seen more than a little of it.

“What? What’s wrong?”

Mindy drank, drank again, and slumped further in her seat. “I work for NASA so I should have a better word than ‘icky,’ but I feel icky. I'm still not sure what to do about it. We can’t send me to Mercury or something so you can watch me by satellite for a year and a half.”

Mark cocked his head to one side.

“Are you fucking with me?”

“What?” said Mindy, sitting up. “No.”

“I think my bullshit detector is still intact, but it’s as rusty with other people as the rest of me, so I wasn’t sure.”

“No,” Mindy said again. “I’m not fucking with you.”

“Then why are you still on this voyeur shit?” At her confused, half-stricken expression, he elaborated. “Venkat and Mitch told me about your complaints when you weren’t at the reception. I figured you must have been pissed to have been taken off orbital rotation to read one morse code message from me a day, and maybe see if I’d died. And I respect that. You decided to stay at your station and do your job today instead of going to the party with the bigwigs who demoted you for 6 months. It was a shitty deal and those bigwig parties suck, anyway. But your wishing we could send you to Mercury to make up for doing your job doesn't track.”

Mindy blinked, processing around the constricting in her chest. “You didn’t know," she said. "You couldn’t know, but I had access to all this stuff about you. I was watching you constantly for 500 sols. And you couldn’t see me, and didn’t know my name even. I heard you about the loss of privacy, but I could never get why it was just me. Why they wouldn’t put someone else on it, with me or instead of me.” 

Mark leaned against the table. “Park, I wanted someone to see me. I wanted NASA, the ESA, a secret North Korean probe, _anyone_ on planet Earth to see me. I didn’t care how. I didn’t care who. I told you, I’m glad it ended up being you. And I'm glad you got a good promotion out of it, in the end. Now you and I get to have a beer on Earth and talk about it.”

Mindy considered saying more, about the interviews on the Ares, and him climbing out of the capsule, but said instead, “I get that it was necessary. I get that you wanted NASA to know you were alive. But the fact is that I was watching, closer than anyone, as you were starved and traumatized by that asshole planet, and nearly killed a half-dozen times in other ways. It’s not fair that some random stranger saw you go through all that.”

Mark wasn’t looking at her, thank God. He was staring at the bar, the handful of people milling and seated around it. There was a baseball game on, and she thought he was watching when he spoke again.

“Martinez and his wife Marissa have this thing. When they get pissed at each other, they say ‘We’ll get past it.’ Both of them say it, like a pact. After the crew came back for me, whenever I got freaked out, or snapped at someone, he’d make us say it. ‘We’ll get past it.’ Or ‘We’ll get past Mars.’”

He finally slid his eyes back to her, and Mindy tried not to look as small as she felt. He was being vulnerable, on purpose, and to her. She couldn’t cower. She couldn’t hide. That wouldn’t be fair.

“I didn’t get a say when I got left on Mars,” Whatney continued. “Like you said, I’ll probably be working through those 549 sols for the rest of my life. I didn’t get a say about who was watching. But it’s over now. I'm not going to say that everything you did for me was worth it—I'm still just one person." He took a deep breath. "But this isn't a one-sided thing anymore. You and I aren’t on different planets anymore. Satellite telemetry isn’t the only thing linking us. We can be friends.” He shrugged, his neck reddening slightly. “Or not. I'm going to be in Houston. We’re both gonna be working for NASA. We could be drinking buddies. Neighbors.” Mindy wasn’t imagining the heat in his eyes as he said, “Or whatever.” Then he blinked once and it was gone. “If you and NASA could help me get off Mars, you and I can get past Mars. Right?”

Mindy swallowed. _“Sure, Mark,”_ she wanted to say.

But she didn’t. Instead, she swallowed again. “We’ll get past it.”

Whatney nodded. “We’ll get past it.”

Then Mark Whatney, Earthen hero and former Martian farmer, winked at her, and rose to order them more cheese curds.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed reading!

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


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